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There seems to be a backlash in progress against Substack's publishing policies. Last week I finally subscribed on Substack to an art-related list where I had

by pavlov 6y ago

There seems to be a backlash in progress against Substack's publishing policies. Last week I finally subscribed on Substack to an art-related list where I had been enjoying the free edition for a while. ($55 / year felt like a pretty good deal for access to more of this interesting content.) A few days later, the writer announced that they're moving off Substack. I'll just quote their message verbatim: "I’m planning to switch to my newsletter provider from Substack to Ghost in the near future — if I understand it right, the paid subscriptions can all be migrated, so I don’t think it’ll be a big hiccup on the subscriber end. I’ll let you know when I actually make the switch. "It’s because I’m concerned with Substack’s marketing plan of subsidizing controversial authors (discourse here: Annaleen Newitz, Emily VanDerWerff, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Metafilter thread), particularly a weirdly large number that can be reasonably construed as anti-trans. Plus, Graham Linehan still uses the service, despite being kicked off plenty of other platforms for documented anti-trans abuse. "The media profiting off of platforming anti-trans views was a major impetus behind the rise of anti-trans sentiment in the UK in 2016, and the same seems to be happening in the US (broadly, not just on Substack). Yet Substack’s response seems to pretty bluntly reject the idea that they need to reconsider anything. Even if they ban Linehan in the future, I’ve lost faith in the leadership." Personally I feel this author is doing the right thing by getting off a platform whose policies they can't support. And it makes me wonder about Substack's stickiness, because as a consumer I certainly don't care one bit which company processes my annual payment and delivers the emails.

Meekro 6y ago
I definitely agree that authors and readers should seek out platforms that reflect their values. But to me, what you described is more fairly called a "reshuffling" rather than a "backlash." Some writers that have been canceled elsewhere are finding a home and an audience on Substack, and others are leaving because they can't, in good conscience, share a home with the first group. Both groups end up better off than they were before. I think Substack's lack of stickiness is part of its appeal. Writers are starting to see the downside of writing for someone else's platform, and Substack is a reaction to that. The writers on Substack own their content database, subscriber list, and even use their own Stripe account to process payments. This makes it easy for a writer to migrate, and makes it hard to deplatform people-- what's the point of getting someone banned from Substack if they'll just be back online in a day on Substack2 without having missed a beat?

by pavlov 6y ago

Meekro 6y ago

I definitely agree that authors and readers should seek out platforms that reflect their values. But to me, what you described is more fairly called a "reshuffling" rather than a "backlash." Some writers that have been canceled elsewhere are finding a home and an audience on Substack, and others are leaving because they can't, in good conscience, share a home with the first group. Both groups end up better off than they were before. I think Substack's lack of stickiness is part of its appeal. Writers are starting to see the downside of writing for someone else's platform, and Substack is a reaction to that. The writers on Substack own their content database, subscriber list, and even use their own Stripe account to process payments. This makes it easy for a writer to migrate, and makes it hard to deplatform people-- what's the point of getting someone banned from Substack if they'll just be back online in a day on Substack2 without having missed a beat?